My Story..
Facebook has invited me to write about the company in this section of my page! the truth is, there is not too much to write about yet, we are a brand new company, just starting out in the world with lots of ideas and dreams about fish and not too much in the way of business skill or admin knowledge :) i am hopeful that i can do what i do best and plunge myself in and learn on the job, if i do not start, i will never learn!
So instead i have decided to write a little about my background and how this venture has come to be.
When i think hard about my journey, i realized that despite my family and close friends knowing snippets about my obsession with ornamental tropical fish, no one in the world knows my full story and how i started the journey which has led me to eventually setup my own aquatic business.
I am pretty sure that my obsession with water and aquatic life started around the age of 5-6 when i used to watch a goldfish swim round in a murky 2 foot fish tank at my fathers house, i used to wipe a clear patch in the algae coated front window and watch fascinated as the old fairground goldfish lived a lonely and uninteresting life!
From there i graduated to become an angler and spent my youth catching Perch and roach in the local canal and spending summer holidays with my friends chasing tench and carp in the local farm ponds (All have long since been filled in an developed into housing estates!
My own fish tanks came around the age of 14 when my aunt gave me two 3 foot tanks one on top of the other on a wrought iron stand, i can vividly remember seeing neon tetras for the first time and being stopped in my tracks by the electric blue striping and the mesmerizing shoaling behavior, completely different from the drab course fish that i was so used to handling/observing. My early memories involve devouring any aquatic literature i could get my hands on, i still have my practical fish keeping magazines from the late 80’s, early 90’s and i remember being fascinated by Mary Bailey who was the cichlid expert of the time, i quickly developed a love for cichlids and especially dwarf cichlids, later on in life i specialised in keeping and breeding Apistogramma and have bred hundreds of species of South American and West African dwarf cichlids over the years.
After playing around with planted tanks and other aquascaping projects my hobby developed into a love for breeding fish, this has remained my focus until the current day and i have been very lucky in my breeding of many rare and unusual species as well as the more common ‘Bread and butter’ fish in the aquarium trade. I get just as much excitement breeding zebra Danios as i do much rarer species. My hobby grew to the point where in 2012 i had built a series of fish rooms dedicated to holding Tropical fish, each one larger than the last, at the time of writing the fishroom holds 90 fish tanks of various sizes and i keep and breed many species with a preference for soft water species from South America.
In 2012 in spotted an advert for a job as Freshwater aquarist at Blue planet aquarium in Cheshire, i applied, passed the interview and was offered the job, suddenly i was plunged into a wonderland of tanks that were larger than anything i had worked on previously, fish i had no chance to acquire or work with at home and a team of aquarists that were as passionate and crazy about fish as i was! it was a wonderful job and i progressed quickly to Display supervisor where i oversaw the team of aquarists in their day to day jobs and maintained high standards in all our displays from freshwater to salt, from a 2 foot fishtank to a 1.000.000 gallon shark pool holding the largest collection of sharks in Europe!
I didnt last long in that role as i was offered a excellent opportunity to move to Chester Zoo Aquarium in the summer of 2014, firstly in a temporary position of Assistant team manager and finally as a full time Lead keeper, this has been a dream come true and to work for the UK’s largest conservation charity has been a honor and pleasure.
In my time at Chester i have been involved in huge projects such as being part of the team that installed tanks into ‘Monsoon forest’ the UK’s largest indoor zoo exhibit, travelling to Mexico to support the reintroduction of Zoogoneticus tequila the critically endangered Goodeid Livebearer, and travelling to Brazil in South America to travel the Amazon river and Rio Negro tributary in search of tropical fish such as Cardinal tetras and Heckel Discus!
Throughout my time in the aquarium hobby (35 years) i have always said that i would start my own business before i was 40, i missed that target (Im 42 now) but have made the decision to act now, put my money where my mouth is and start Premier Aquatics! we will start business in January 2020 and will start with 60 aquariums, we will concentrate on providing tropical fish, plants and a few foods to start with and hope to build the business as 2020 progresses! I promise to put in lots of hard work, to maintain very high standards, both in customer service but more importantly in looking after our livestock! Im a hobbyist at heart and hope to share my passion with you all.
Where will we end up? im not sure but i am excited to find out! I cannot wait to start work and meet some of my Facebook friends in person.
All the very best,
Ste
